Birthrate falls in Australia’s biggest cities amid cost-of-living crisis, preliminary data shows

Young families continued to delay or give up on having children in the face of elevated living costs over the year, according to Prof Amanda Davies. Photograph: Image taken by Mayte Torres/Getty Images

Low birthrates in Australia’s biggest cities deepened in 2024 amid sustained cost-of-living pressures, dragging the national rate to a near-record low.

Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane each saw further declines in the number of children born per woman from 2023 to 2024, according to KPMG’s preliminary analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics population data, barely offset by increases in Perth and in regional Australia.